raster in Illustrator

Aris

Posted 11 October 2007 - 04:05 AM

Aris

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Location:Athens

Greece

I’m new in Illustrator and I don’t know how I can import raster images from Arcmap 9.2. I’m exporting my entire project in AI and then I open it with CS3. All vectors (shapefiles) are working fine but raster images (DEM, hillshades etc) are not editable, can’t change the colors or the transparency. Am I doing something wrong or this is the way it should work?

Posted 11 October 2007 - 06:11 AM

I would suggest that you export the rasters separately and tweak them in Photoshop. You have only limited possibilities to play with them in Illy, unless you convert them to vectors (e.g. Live Trace, or using some other tool). You should be able to change the transparency though, just select them and play with the transparency palette.

If you are happy with them in Arc, including the colors, then just export them (as e.g. png) and have them as they are in Illy. You can crop them by using clipping masks or opacity masks. I am not sure ArcGIS can export/create CMYK images though.

Aris

Posted 11 October 2007 - 06:34 AM

Aris

Contributor

Validated Member

23 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Athens

Greece

Hi Aris,

I would suggest that you export the rasters separately and tweak them in Photoshop. You have only limited possibilities to play with them in Illy, unless you convert them to vectors (e.g. Live Trace, or using some other tool). You should be able to change the transparency though, just select them and play with the transparency palette.

If you are happy with them in Arc, including the colors, then just export them (as e.g. png) and have them as they are in Illy. You can crop them by using clipping masks or opacity masks. I am not sure ArcGIS can export/create CMYK images though.

Thanks for the reply, as far as I know ArcMap (at least 9.2) can export in CMYK. What I’ll probably do is to finalize all raster in Arc and then export and finish with the vector and labeling in CS3.

Andrew

Posted 14 October 2007 - 09:43 PM

A tip I found elsewhere on this forum helped me in my workflow from ArcMap to Illy. BTW I only run ArcGIS 9.2 and Illy CS2.

1. Export all vectors as illustrator format and ramp up the resolution (can't find the article but it suggested the maxium of 7200 dpi. NB. Only do this for vector files), also make sure that none of the vector layers have had a transparency added to them this is better left for illy.

2. Export each of your raster layers as a Tiff file (just my preference i'm sure other formats are also suitable), I designate one tiff file for each raster layer, that enables me to apply transparecies to individual raster layers. As you mentioned earlier though all your raster work as in colour settings and what not need to be done in ArcMap before exporting.